Quick peek at the Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub

The long-anticipated WTC Transportation Hub designed by Santiago Calatrava had a “soft” opening at the beginning of March. Shoe-horned next to the WTC Memorial, the Hub’s steel wingspan has loomed over the active construction site for years, promising big things to come. In fact, the opening was so low-keyed that the main entrance was still unfinished and signs showing how to enter were non-existent. The building itself is surrounded by cyclone fencing with no obvious way of getting inside. Ask a stranger how to enter, and the only response was “I don’t know, but I know it cost $4 billion!”

Yes, that’s right. Seven years after its scheduled opening and $2 billion over budget, the Oculus as the central space is to be known, is still incomplete. It succeeds the PATH station and the shopping center that was underneath the original towers. For all its grandeur, it is a mall and a subway station, and only the 18th busiest at that, serving 50,000 weekday riders who travel between New Jersey and New York City.

Soon, we are promised, we’ll be able to enter directly from the street or through underground passages that feed the new office buildings and the major subway hub at Fulton Center, one block away. This will be the final leg in connecting many subway lines in the City.

The Oculus is a general public space that will be filled with stores and also used for events. Its soaring height is meant to impress and it does. At this point, criticism has been muted, and centers on the question of how long its marble and painted steel will remain so clean and unrelentingly white.

About Carol Berens

Carol Berens is an architect and author in New York City. She has been writing for UrbDeZine since 2011.

The germ of the idea for her most recent book, Redeveloping Industrial Sites, started with a short article on the new Paris parks way back in 1998 for the now-defunct TWA Ambassador. Through visits to these parks and interviews with the architects and city planners, she saw how Paris’ industrial past was being transformed into not only into new parks, but new neighborhoods. Of course, Paris isn’t the only city that is confronted with the ruins of its earlier industry. The exploration into how other countries and cities including New York are continuing to reinvent themselves has been an interesting and fun journey.

She is the author of Hotel Bars and Lobbies (Mc-Graw Hill, 1996), articles on design and urban issues for various magazines as well as the Associate Editor for The Paris Times, a former English-language monthly newspaper published in Paris.

A former vice president at the Empire State Development Corporation, she led efforts in the land development of several upstate mixed-use communities as well as the sale and development of surplus state-owned land. Carol received M. Arch from Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and worked as an architect at Marcel Breuer Architect in Paris, France, and at Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in New York City.